news-record.com

John Hope Franklin not only recorded history, he lived it. But he was careful never to confuse his role as an advocate for African Americans with his role as a scholar.

On Wednesday, Franklin, 94, died of congestive heart failure in Durham where he taught at Duke University. He was one of the nation's most influential historians and a leader in the last century's reckoning with racial bigotry. In 1995, President Bill Clinton honored him with the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Franklin's early years in Oklahoma were marred by frequent encounters with racism. After being denied admission to the University of Oklahoma, he attended Fisk University in Tennessee and went on to graduate studies at Harvard. He taught at several colleges, including the University of Chicago, N.C. Central, St. Augustine's and Duke.

His widely praised book, "From Slavery to Freedom," first published in 1947, traces black Americans' quest for racial equality. Published in several languages, it has sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide.

Franklin personally joined efforts to confront racial injustice. He helped NAACP lawyers prepare the 1954 case that overturned school segregation and marched in 1965 with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala.

North Carolina became his adopted home. And while decrying the South's troubled racial history, he also took aim at the more subtle indignities endured by African Americans living in the North.

Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. aptly describes Franklin as "the prince of black academics" and the "intellectual godfather" of the civil rights movement.

He will be remembered for teaching that black history and American history are inexorably intertwined.

All Americans can honor Franklin's memory by carrying on his lifelong commitment to equality and fairness.